POLL of this and nothing: TALK TALK TALK

Every song is a rough, unhewn gem. "She Is Mine" might be my favorite awkward love song.

Rock hard. "Pretty in Pink" no way the best track on this tho. Early contenders for me = "Dumb Waiters", "Mr Jones", "Into You Like a Train", "It Goes On", maybe "So Run Down", definitely "She Is Mine". Awwww shit.

Yeah I definitely lean towards "She Is Mine", it's always made me tear up a little bit when he gets to "They're making up things that we've all heard before".

This record just fucking owns tho. 1st and 3rd only a tiny bit weaker, too.

"All of This and Nothing"

This is as difficult as the "Atomizer" poll!

I love the false/unresolved ending of "All of This and Nothing" but nowadays I feel like the song itself is a bit one note-y.

"She Is Mine" vs "Dumb Waiters" vs "So Run Down" vs "All Of This And Nothing" vs "Mr Jones" vs "Into You Like A Train" vs "Pretty In Pink"

Somebody should do a Talk Talk vs. "Talk Talk" (Music Machine) (and cover versions like Alice Cooper's too maybe) vs. Talk Talk Talk poll.

I'm voting "Into You Like A Train."

I'm holding on to see if somebody votes "It Goes On", if not I might have to slip it a vote.

Dumb Waiters vs No Tears vs Into You Like a Train ... can't decide!

all the lyrics are here, with tracks in the order I remember them

http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Palms/3625/talktalk.htm

Is that the US verzh? The UK one is ordered like in the poll.

Yeah, Roger's link is the US tracklisting. The one here keeps making my eyes cross.

lol your tracklisting feels v. wrong to me. I honestly think objectively the UK one is better sequenced.

I can't imagine the album starting with "Dumb Waiters!"

"Pretty in Pink" makes better as an opener: hookiest song, best lyrics, beautiful chaos barely contained.

what was it about this era in music, when they would fuck willy-nilly with the running order of albums for different markets

Yeah, one of the Blondie polls pointed up the truly bizarre choices of singles on different sides of the pond too.

"Dumb Waiters" has that awesome opening sax riff that really boots the album into gear.

imho both sequences kick ass... but for purists the current remaster abides by the UK sequence

slightly off topic: why do distributors do that "oh let's shuffle the tracks by geography" shit?

this was back in the day on new releases, so it's not as though they were expecting a) the collector market to hunt down precious import cassette tapes or b) cunningly tracing leak sources. anyone who knows the biz better than me can shed some light? was it just for the protolulz?

I'm guessing it's to do with believing that the different markets valued slightly different elements of the band or something. "Pretty in Pink" is a perfectly good opener, agreed. I don't know if it was a UK first time around, that might have something to do with different sequencing too?

i considered the "delicate, highly scientific, local-knowledge-based marketring wizardry" angle but dismissed it as too dumb for words. not that that's ever stopped anything in the music biz but i'm going to be gutted if that's the real answer.

UK hit I meant to say. Could it be as simple as higher chart profile in the US?

Nah, wiki says that's bollocks.

Dumb Waiters 4EVA!!!

found: original pretty in pink vid (note, this in no way signals any voting preference on my part)

the blast of mr jones totally sticks out. what a great, nasty kind of riff. totally infectious.

an all-time favorite album for me.

I voted 'so run down,' but it could have been 5 or 6 others.

i am no closer to a decision than i was yesterday

me either

Not really sure it would be my fave if I sat down with the album right now but "Into You Like A Train" always seems to randomly pop up in my head, so I'll vote for that one.

An all time favourite album of mine also. After much thought, voted "Into You Like a Train".

The greatness of "Pretty in Pink" was in a way established by the contrast of the glossy later revision. I'm voting "Mr Jones", but at least 6 of these are timeless. One of the defining records of the era, in my subjective version of the universe.

so good so far... Mr Jones it is.

Second thoughts, arggh. Mr Jones is a pile-driver of a tune but She is Mine has the better lines. Always liked "I had to pay the doorman / just to use the door."

glenn otm abt Pretty in Pink

knee-jerk instinct is "into you like a train," but some consideration is required. not many of these i don't love.

i gotta admit, voting for Into You Like a Train or I Wanna Sleep With You just seems like a bad idea...it's a bit disconcertng to hear British new-wave moppets careening headfirst into AC/DC-Prince territory...

I still don't think these guys get the credit they deserve. Did their shoulder pad sellout period taint the impact of their first three records?

i gotta admit, voting for Into You Like a Train or I Wanna Sleep With You just seems like a bad idea...it's a bit disconcertng to hear British new-wave moppets careening headfirst into AC/DC-Prince territory...

― jagged-electronically mäandernden underbody (Drugs A. Money), Friday, April 17, 2009

Two thoughts on this.

1. wat?

2. yes AC/DC + Prince collab asap plz

Prince-ACDC territory: lustful odes featuring clunky (bcz too obvious) double entendres as their main content...Prince makes it work bcz his extreme sexuality matches his megalomania, which in turn matches his absolute mastery over all forms of song...Bon Scott makes it work by amping up the crudity of his self-made, self-owned hooligan image...Richard Butler, on the other hand, hadn't done anything to my knowledge by 1981 which justifies him being able to sing about wanting into a girl like a train without sounding ludicrous and a little icky (the fact that he actually manages to not sound abominably icky is itself a monument to how good this album as a whole really is)...

no kind of love
no kind of love
i don't wanna make no scene
lovers come and go
or make you mrs. anyone
or make you mr. me
i'm into you like a train
into you like a train
into you like a train
yeah fall in love
yeah fall in love
i don't wanna tape you down
or shack you up with me
or put you where the flowers go
or get into your mind
i'm into you like a train
into you like a train
into you like a train
now fall in love
yeah fall in love
if you believe that anyone
like me within a song
is outside it all
then you are all so wrong
if you believe that anyone
like me within a song
would try and change it all
then you have been put on
i'm into you like a train
into you like a train
into you like a train
yeah fall in love
yeah fall in love
no kind of love
no kind of love
i don't wanna wear no side
or complicate it all
or celebrate your prettiness
and kick you in it all
i'm into you like a train
into you like a train
into you like a train
yeah fall in love
yeah fall in love
if you believe that anyone
like me within a song
would try and change it all
then you have been put on
so wrong
into you like a train

Yeah that still doesn't scan as blatant double-entendre to me; more like "I'm a dorky trainspotter but I really, really like you (oh and btw this metaphor is kinda sexual)"

"I Wanna Sleep With You" is also a lot dorkier than the music and title portend.

Put it all together and it sounds like a fourteen-year-old punching the wall and throwing shit cuz this pretty girl in algebra class won't take him seriously.

Yeah, it has never occurred to me to look at anything on this album as even attempting to walk the same style of bravado as Prince or AC/DC.

A curious thing is how I have been on and on about the Psychedelic Furs for years and years (ask any pop fan who knows me!), including on ilx sometimes, and have had almost zero response or respect for it -- basically have long accepted that to most the Furs are a joke. But here is a thread full of tough rock fans all declaring their ardour for this great record by this band that is not liked by anyone you actually ever meet.

I agree about the excellence of the record and how strong it is as a whole; might be their best, yes, though I have a big soft spot for the 1989 and 1991 releases. Though I always loved 'Pretty In Pink' my vote for song here would have to go to 'No Tears'. I first really discovered it when I went to the apartment of Magnetic Fields' Dudley Klute on the Lower East Side, years ago, and he dug out the old tape cassette of this record and played it. That song struck me very strongly: so much of what I love about the Furs, the droning melody, the predictable circling of certain key words, were here, with simple and poignant chords, and buzzing tough riffs playing in the background against the Em. I actually wrote a kind of tribute song to it, a Furs pastiche, a month or so later.

Am I the only one on the thread to celebrate this song? I don't remember seeing anyone else go on about it.

I like it; it's awkward and sweet.

I'm a huge fan, but accept the diminishing returns too that begins with the excellent Forever Now. Thanks to rogermexico, I can now check out Book of Days almost two years after he and J0hn urged it on me. I have a pretty soft spot for "Until She Comes" too.

this band that is not liked by anyone you actually ever meet

i know lots of p-fur fans. but i suppose i am old and so are they. i'm so old i can remember when the furs were cool and weird and my sister painted the lyrics to "imitation of christ" on a long black coat she wore to school.

(a guy i work with was all excited because he ran into john ashton in a music store in woodstock a little while back. i guess ashton has a house there or something. guy i work with is a guitarist/music geek, so he and ashton had a long guitar-geek talk. he said ashton was a cool and friendly dude.)

Still not seeing it. "Into You Like A Train" deals with the tension between the frilly trappings of romance and the consuming intensity of desire, but that's as far as any resemblance to e.g. "Erotic City" goes.

Prince (in one mode) and AC/DC (reflexively) handle the tension by getting physical - setting up the raw truth of flesh ("I just want your creamy thighs;" "she had the sightless eyes/telling me no lies") as a wrecking ball to demolish the airy pretensions of lurve. And the goal is seduction - "join me in the real, adult world of People Who Know The Score by giving up that thang"

"Into You Like A Train" doesn't do that. It's not cocky or seductive, it's tormented and self-mocking. In the face of an overwhelming desire that threatens all sense of self, the song sneers at itself for having been dumb enough to believe in flowers and prettiness and yeah fall in love.

The train analogy is intentionally trite (as is the sneer - Butler's always doing Johnny Rotten by way of Baudelaire), because cliché is all a sucker deserves. Closest thing I can think of would actually be "Big Dumb Sex."

/pretentious shit. basically, dan and alfred otm

@the pinefox I've narrowed it down to "no tears," "pretty in pink" or "dumb waiters"... "pretty in pink" for the jaded, sorta compassionate, sorta-misogynistic demimonde observer pose pulled out again to such devastating effect in "book of days"; "dumb waiters" for the groove and the hook," "no tears" because it's perfect.

@tipsy mothra i must have the transcript of your coworker's conversation with Ashton stat

So this is going to end up being "Dumb Waiters", "She Is Mine" or "All of This and Nothing" for me.

took a few listens... the back half really takes off, d'unnit? like, from "Into Like A Train" on it just builds and builds, and then "she is mine" lets you down easy...

I think I'm going to vote for "All Of This And Nothing"... it feels like the punchline to the whole jaded pose, "hey, I never meant that stuff..."

plus it rocks

it is "She is Mine"

ended up voting "mr. jones" after further consideration.

Am I the only one on the thread to celebrate...No Tears

After this thread I went back and relistened to this album, the first time in many years. That song sounded great, much better than I remembered.

It belongs on the Mount Rushmore of Psychedelic Furs songs along with Dumb Waiters, President Gas and the alltime immortal classic, All That Money Wants, which is their crowning achievement.

vince ely really makes that song

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

All that ruins "All That Money Wants": that tinny sound.

I keep meaning to start a thread called, "Great Songs Recorded for Compilations." "All That Money Wants" would join the august company of Stevie Wonder's "Do I Do" and "That Girl," Dylan's "Watching The River Flow," um, what else? I'll need ideas.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Hey. I voted for Dumb Waiters. What's with the goose egg? And how come nobody else voted for that?

a) Poll results are randomly generated after pretend voting finishes
b) Cos there are 10 great songs on this album

damn, how'd I miss this? this is my all-time favorite record. Every song is a gem. "All of This and Nothing" is their magnum opus. I love how the rest of the instruments follow Kilbourn's forlorn sax. "No Tears" is a close second. Beautiful memories of this record. Saw 'em on this tour. I was 17.

aw, dumb waiters is so great. shame on yall. shame on every one of us.

I almost voted for Dumb Waiters! when I first got the record it was my favorite by a longshot. but "she is mine" is the one that I used to have emotional collapses over in times of crisis, the one I used to pull out the album for, the one I felt like held its purpose for me. I don't think RB ever quite nailed his unique axis of mourning for something loss & not being able to entirely connect with the lost thing as directly as he did there.

I think I might've voted for "It Goes On" in the end cos I wanted it to get some recognition but I'd probly have prefered "Dumb Waiters" to get some recognition if I'd've known.

I love "All of This and Nothing" to an unreasonable degree, so much so that I'm not at all bummed about not voting for "Dumb Waiters" (which really should have gotten a vote, lol)

What the band does in the first forty seconds of "She Is Mine" - how the bass descends then picks itself up again, garnished by the sax – is just stunning.

it really is - there's a union of form & feeling in that song that's really devastating, almost like an aesthetic argument for the possibilities of emotional depths in a formal presentation

aw, dumb waiters is so great. shame on yall. shame on every one of us.

For the record, I voted for Dumb Waiters but for some reason it didn't get counted. There should be a giant asterisk on this poll.

For the record, this poll was impossible but yeah it's criminal that "Dumb Waiters" got zero* votes.

Let's discuss how awful – how irredeemable - this is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_pH-z1_KdE&feature=related